


we returned to our places; these kingdoms

by minarchy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Office, Internalized Biphobia, M/M, Masturbation, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:55:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/pseuds/minarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is raining, and it's a Tuesday, one of those lost days in between the glutenous moan of Monday and the soft-edged euphoria of Friday, and that just makes it all the worse in Bucky's book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the internalised biphobia tag refers to bucky being out at work but not to his sister

       
_Mind you, sometimes angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and_  
_when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s_  
_how you get shooting stars._  
_**— Vladimir Nabokov**_  
  


When Bucky first sees him, it's a Tuesday. He is never expecting new staff to be doing the floor circuit on a Tuesday; the office likes to show them off fresh on a Monday, Peggy down from HR to walk them around and give them far too many names and far too many faces to remember in one go, first day anxiety. No one is entirely certain if this is meant as orientation or intimidation — knowing HR, it could be either. 

Bucky likes Peggy, for all their limited interactions, and it's probably a good thing that she handles most of the new intake — she’s got that smooth, easy way with people that makes everyone whose name she calls feel like a personal friend, the warmth behind her smile making everything she says seem genuine in a way that has Bucky thinking of Natasha; also in the way that Peggy makes it excruciatingly clear that if you take the touch of bra showing through the opening of a shirt to be an invitation, stilettos weigh elephant pounds on the fine bones of the upper foot and none of the women in the office are afraid to use them.

 

He should be working, there are deadlines he’s supposed to be meeting, but it's difficult to concentrate when there is something different in the office, a shift in the still, recycled air that pushes imaginary pressure on his ears, like coming up from underwater; there is something different in the office and he's spent the past five minutes checking to see if Carol has changed her hair or if Barton's re-broken his nose — and it's only then that he catches the sight of small and slim and blond with the mail cart, and Carol leans over and says,

"be nice; he's new,"

and Natasha leans over and says,

"be _good_ ; we like him,"

which, quite honestly, sucks.

 

Bucky has to bite his lip when he walks past and watch his computer screen carefully and concentrated so as not to look up and catch his eye and ask how he likes his morning coffee because Natasha says that's a _terrible line_ , and it really isn't fair that the offices don't have on-site showers like he was promised by television and the movies (and porn, he can be honest if only with himself, if only in the safety of his own head), because it would be far more feasible to fantasise about taking small and slim and blond down to the shower room and holding him against the tiles by his bony fucking hips whilst Bucky swallowed his dick if the shower rooms _actually existed_.

 

His name is _Steve_.

 

Information isn't particularly hard to come by; they work in an office building that uses closed circulation air conditioning and that applies to gossip as well as air, and the employees that are not chained to desks come under broad titled units like Building Management, so Steve isn't just with Porters on the mail, he also works in the Catering on occasion and gets called in to do filing for Procurement, which is information that Bucky most definitely doesn't use to find him after sucking down his cigarette in record time, ignoring the knowing smirks of the girls, watching him smile bright and honest at his colleagues and wondering if that tightening sensation is lust or jealousy, because if it's the latter then this is the point where he usually runs screaming.

 

"Oh, honey," Jess says, having come up to see Carol about something apparently work related (they’re not supposed to know they’re dating but honestly, honestly) and catching him dithering over what to order for lunch so as not to appear a pathetic office drone but giving up in favour of coffee and a packet of chips from the vending machine outside the toilets for the third time that week. Bucky puts his head in his hands. "Why is this one different?" Jess asks. "Why don't you flash a smile and drop your pants like always? Not necessarily in that order."

"Carol said I had to be _nice_ ," Bucky says; "Nat said I have to be _good_. I'm rather fond of my balls, thank you."

"Anticipation's half the fun," Jess says, leaning her hip against the edge of his desk and looking at him far too fondly. Bucky glances up at her, sees her gaze flick over to where Carol is chewing someone out over the phone on the other side of the office, manfully resists the urge to roll his eyes.

He can feel it, whatever the grasping feeling in his chest is, burning like shame across his skin and he feels that everyone can see her looking at him like that and he feels that everyone can see that it's making him feel like this; James Barnes never does _feelings_ because James Barnes is entirely uncomplicated and if there’s anything that’s the opposite of uncomplicated it’s the nausea creeping up the back of his throat right now, so he wants to snap at her but it's Jess and if she doesn't gut him straight away Carol will hold him down later.

"Jess," he says, instead. "I'm not having fun."

She pats his cheek. He hates that.

 

Bucky stands in his tiny square shower with the sides of his feet pressing against the edges of the shower basin and his head against the tiles in front of him, water turning the air to steam and his skin scarlet red as he bites his lips over and over, dragging his teeth across the skin until they are as red as his fingers and as blood-filled as his cock as he watches it disappear into his fist through half-lidded half-focused eyes, imagining small and slim and blond Steve up against the wall with a leg between Bucky's and his mouth open and gasping in the overheated room and his own cock hot and hard and caught in the join of Bucky's leg and his hip, caught between the two of them as they rut together, steam and sweat and water and pre-come mixing and sliding over skin until Bucky comes with curse and pants against the wall, hot lips against cool tiles, sweet dichotomy, free arm braced next to his head and he washes his semen off himself with a sense of dissatisfaction and loneliness that he hates and doesn't recognise.

 

He goes out with Barton and Maria and Natasha on Friday night and picks up a girl, long legs and blonde hair and big blue eyes with a waist that Bucky can wraps his hands around, buys her a drink and smiles at her slow and low and licks her out in a toilet stall before paying for the taxi back to her apartment and fucking her up against the wall as soon as she's closed the door behind her; and if his breathing sounds more like someone else's name than hers she isn't complaining. Her sister's dropping off her nephews tomorrow and her boyfriend's in Toronto on business, so who is she to complain if Bucky's breathing at the damp space where her jaw and her ear meet with her neck sounds like _Steve_ and not at all like Gloria.

 

Gloria, small and slim and blonde, was supposed to be a distraction.

Bucky doesn't feel particularly distracted as he leaves before she wakes up the next morning, a common courtesy to both of them; if he stays for coffee they'll have to talk and all he wants to know about her is her name and that she has a pressure point just to the left of her spine in her lower back that makes her scream, and all she wants to know is that his name is James and he brought his own protection so there's no potential awkward explaining if her boyfriend notices a condom missing on his return. (She thinks this is rebound sex but she doesn't really care.)

 

He showers and doesn't masturbate, keeping the water on just the pleasant side of cool as he washes the sex stench off and resists the urge to knock his head bloody against the tiles in an attempt to shake _Steve_ loose from under his skin.

 

Monday, and he knows he doesn't look too hot, eyes red-rimmed and skin paler than usual but Barton will say hangover and Logan will say hangover and sex so Bucky won't need to make excuses for his appearance, even though he is more than certain that the women will guess it's down more to his ever-burgeoning and increasingly-worrisome _infatuation_ with small and slim and blond.

(He isn’t sure where the line between lust blurs into full on pining, but Bucky can taste it sour at the back of his mouth and he isn't certain whether it's because he wants Steve more because he's never had anyone like him or whether it's because he hasn't had Steve yet and he doesn't know how to go about it now; he's left it so long because he's developed all these _feelings_ regarding someone that he's barely exchanged more than ten words with in his entire life, and fuck, that's embarrassing.)

Monday, and he gets through the morning with a glower at Barton when he catcalls over the cubicle wall at him and subtly reroutes his telephone so he doesn't have to talk to anyone, and then he finds himself being cornered during his cigarette break and everyone else has mysteriously disappeared. Fuckers.

"Have I done something to _offend_ you?" Steve says, glaring up at Bucky (and this is not helping any height kink fantasies that Bucky has been quashing, because now he knows _exactly_ how much shorter than him Steve is when standing right up close and okay, not the best thoughts to be having when Steve is standing _right up close_ ).

"I, uh," Bucky says, confused and unnerved at how small and slim and blond had managed to sneak up on him _pretty-fucking-ninja_ and that is his excuse for the lack of coherency, hand on the Bible, honest your Honour. “Come again?”

"Look," Steve says, "I'm hardly expecting _friendship_ , or whatever, but a bit of courtesy would be nice, okay? Just because I’m not in a fucking cubicle doesn’t mean you can ignore me like I’m — like I’m _less_ that you."

"I, uh," Bucky says, again, and then catches up and adds, "wait, no, that's not what I—" He stops, which is probably a good move, because even with the added thinking time he still continues with, "do you want to get a drink some time?" a line that is not exactly his smoothest and one that he probably should have lead up to, judging by the way that Steve's face snaps shut.

"Okay," he says, and Bucky's really pissed him off now, he can tell by the way his jaw is set, and for one brief moment he thinks Steve is going to take a swing at him. "Fine. You think this is the first time shits like you have run a pool?" And Bucky is really, genuinely confused now, so he doesn't stop Steve when a sharp finger stabs his breastbone. "You can go fuck yourself, pal," Steve says, his tone flat and his eyes angry, “‘cause you sure ain’t getting anything off me.” 

Bucky watches him leave and rubs the sore point in his chest with the heel of his hand as he tries to figure out what, exactly, just happened.

 

He showers and readjusts the fantasy because Steve is clearly no blushing virgin, he wouldn't just let Bucky push him around and pant against Bucky's shoulder until he comes, he'd push back and suck on Bucky's tongue and maybe slip a finger in, because his accent in Brooklyn and his posture is _fight me_ and Bucky knows that, knows how it shapes you and he finds himself bucking into his hand rather more enthusiastically than he expected and rests his face against the wall and thinks, _fuck, I'm in trouble_.

 

"I _thought_ ," Natasha says, rounding on him as they huddle under the edge of the roof, sheltering from the wind that carries the damp promise of rain as it slices through their suits, "I told you to be _good_." Bucky blinks and then thinks, _oh shit_ , and it must show on his face because Natasha resets her posture, leans back a little because she knows he’s got the message, and says, "damn _fucking_ straight."

"I didn't _do_ anything," Bucky says, in a poor attempt at a defense. "He started on _me_. It's not my fault."

The annoyance in Natasha's face amplifies, somehow, and he really needs to learn how to do that because it would be excellent at terrifying the loud and irritating children from his stoop (but _come on, Barnes, focus_ before she tears your balls clean out through your zipper), and Natasha says,

"the fuck are you, thirteen?"

which pretty much secures that argument as a complete and utter failure. Bucky rubs the heel of his hand into his eye socket and deftly avoids getting smoke in his eye through the combination factors of years of practise and good fortune as the wind carries it away from his face.

"What do you want me to do, Nat?" he says. 

"Apologise," she says.

"I don't even know what I did _wrong_."

"Apologise anyway."

 

Bucky tries, honestly, but it’s just that whenever he sees Steve (and he sees him a lot; for all that working in a twenty-storey building is nothing to shout about in New York it should at least offer him some law of averages advantages, but evidently he owes the universe a debt on that count, because he sees him _every fucking day_ ) his lungs feel like they’re trying to force their way into his stomach and he can’t say anything because he’s afraid that he’ll throw up or actually say something and he’s not sure which would be the more terrible option because both would make everything worse than it already is.

How do you apologise for something when you don’t know what that something is? 

 

It’s still autumn because there isn’t ice waiting to catch his feet on the train platform but that’s the only indication Bucky’s offered as he stands in the hospital reception, surrounded by sneezing adults and squalling children. Even once he’s past the main desk, following the coloured lines on the floor through to the wards, almost everyone is sees is suffering red-nosed, swollen sinuses and broken skin thrown into harsh relief by the fluorescent lighting.

“Don’t know how you do it, Becks,” he says. She throws her hands up in the air.

“As if Albany wasn’t bad enough, am I right?” Rebecca turns the motion into reaching for him, fingers grasping as he steps forward to kiss her cheek. 

“Life’s a bitch, huh.” The seat by her bedside is obnoxiously green, the waterproof fabric squeaking when he sits on it. She winks at him, slaps the cast on her leg.

They sit in silence for a long while, watching but not watching the mindless daytime television that is always playing in hospital wards, no matter how much you’re paying for it.

“Hey,” Rebecca says, turning her head on the pillows to look at him. “You ever gonna talk to me, big brother?”

Bucky shifts, his trousers sticking to the seat and ruining the subtly of the movement that he was going for, Rebecca looking at him with her big clear eyes like she can see exactly what’s bothering him. He wishes she would just say it, even though that would defeat the object of the exercise; she’s waiting for him to say it, she’s always been waiting for him to say it. He wonders if she’s been talking to Natasha — he knows that they get together, sometimes, not to talk about him because he isn’t the sole focus of their lives, but he knows that they do. Talk about him.

Not-talking to Rebecca isn’t anything like not-talking to Steve — with Steve there’s this anger that fills the space between them, resentment and irritation from Steve’s side that Bucky _still_ doesn’t understand and hates because he doesn’t understand it; with Rebecca he feels

_wretched_

like he’s letting her down; he wants to talk about Steve but he also doesn’t because this, this isn’t something that they have ever covered before and he feels _wretched_ because since when was he the kind of guy to keep something like this, something _like this_ , from his little sister?

“Hey,” she says again. She’s still watching him. Bucky’s pretty sure that she’s knows what he’s thinking. He wishes she would just say it.

She doesn’t; she reaches out instead, wraps her cool fingers around his and leaves them there. 

“How’s Nat?” she says.

“Angry with me.” He doesn’t mean to sound so fucking glum, he knows what the follow-up is going to be, he’s so fucking terrified about the fallout, he can’t have this conversation.

“How come?”

“I—” _am not ready for this conversation_. He’s panicking, ever so slightly, because he cannot finish the sentence without broaching this subject that they’ve been dancing around for years, because Bucky doesn’t know how to say it and now it’s been far too long, how is he supposed to say it now.

Rebecca is just watching him, propped up on her pillows on her ancient hospital bed. Waiting for him. Bucky rarely feels this awful. He looks back at the TV, because he can’t look at her. After a few minutes, Rebecca follows suit; she’s still holding his hand, squeezing his fingers with hers.

Some time later — he doesn’t know how long it’s been, he hasn’t been watching the show but there’s cheering and clapping so he assumes a resolution has occurred between the guests — she says,

“you’ll figure it out.”

He doesn’t look at her, but he is very aware of her in his peripheral vision, unmoving.

“You always do.”

“I—” _am going to be sick_ , “I don’t think I can, this time. _Becks_ —”

She squeezes his hand.

“I really fucked up, Becks,” he says. “I don’t know what I did. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“So tell me.”

“I—” _can’t_. “There’s someone new at the office,” he tries. “I really — I’ve already fucked up.”

“Then unfuck it,” she says, pulling her hand free to grab at his chin, forcing him to look at her. “You like this someone new?” She still not saying it. He loves her. He hates her. He nods. “Unfuck it,” she repeats, and smacks him playfully on the ear, laughing when he dodges too late. “If you’ve already shot it to Hell, how much worse can you make it?”

Bucky rubs at his smarting ear. “Always with the stellar advice, sis.”

She bats her eyelashes at him. “One of us had to get the brains in the family.”

 

It is raining, and it's a Tuesday, one of those lost days in between the glutenous moan of Monday and the soft-edged euphoria of Friday, and that just makes it all the worse in Bucky's book. He has to change three times on the subway and everything smells damp, wet and drying like dog and old clothes; he stands because this is New York, and he can feel the water dripping off his trouser cuffs and his bent elbow and soaking into his already sodden socks. He squelches when he walks.

There is a small group of people at the end of an alleyway; Bucky wouldn't have seen them if he hadn't paused to wipe the rain from his eyes and check his phone (he had one text, from Clint, a bad joke in poor taste that he felt the need to pass along for some god forsaken reason known only to him, but he cannot walk and see the lettering at the same time without stepping in any of the numerous puddles that litter the sidewalk, wide and deeper than you'd imagine until you're calf-deep and cursing). They do not look like they are sheltering from the rain — Bucky catches the sight of flying fists and a small figure on the ground, snatches of ugly laughter tacking over on the wind.

He is not known for the quality of his decisions when they are made on a whim, and he thinks that this is another prime example for Natasha to chew him over for and for Jess and Carol to laugh at and for Maria to smile and raise and eyebrow and say _playing the hero again, Barnes?_ as he darts down the alley and grabs the first guy by the collar of his shirt, pulling hard and catching his windpipe as he throws him down.

They underestimate him, judging on the value of his suit and his shoes and the briefcase he has strapped across his back; it is not a fair fight because Bucky grew up fighting, fists and feet and elbows. He doesn't fight clean because that isn't how you get a reputation to be left the fuck alone and besides, it's not as much fun as watching one of them gasping on the ground as he clutches his crotch after Bucky kicks his balls back inside his body.

They run, naturally. Bucky takes a passing shot at Crotch Guy with his heel as he passes, and grins maliciously as he staggers and falls face-first onto the tarmac. He turns, and helps Steve to his feet. It isn't until Steve is mostly upright and wheezing that he realises who he is.

An asthma pump is lying, disguarded or tossed out of reach, Bucky cannot be sure which; he gathers it up, holds it in front of Steve's face and asks,

"how many?"

Steve holds up three fingers, his other hand tugging his collar away from his neck as though that will free his airway, even though they both know that's not how it works. Carefully, Bucky slides the pump between his teeth and presses down, firmly; three pumps that Steve drags down and holds, pushing the medicine to the bottom of his lungs. Bucky wonders what it feels like, to have your chest constricted by your own body and feeling it reopen.

"Hey," he says, hand on Steve's shoulder as he breathes. "You okay?"

Steve spits, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and looks at Bucky, his eyes uncertain and distrusting, why are you helping me what's in it for you.

"Sure," he says, belies himself by wincing as he straightens. "I had'm on the ropes."

"I know you did," Bucky says, grinning. "Where'd you live?"

Steve pauses, and then tells him, a vague address that has Bucky frowning.

"That's the other side of town," he says.

"That college education sure didn't go to waste," Steve says. He looks up at Bucky, still slightly bent over, one arm wrapped around the base of his ribs. His lip is split, red turning pink in the rain water that washes over his face. "Is this the part where I drop to my knees to thank the all-conquering hero?"

Bucky's mouth goes dry. He should make a joke, crack a grin, but it hits a little too close to home and they are not friends.

Instead, he says, "come on," and helps him out of the alley. "I'm only five minutes away. Get you patched up and then get you in a cab, okay?"

Steve doesn't say anything, but he doesn't stop Bucky either, and Bucky takes that as a win.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i return to thee, pining office au, after four years of neglect! please forgive me.
> 
> chapter one has been reworked, so could probably benefit for a re-read. i will, i promise, have the final chapter up within the next two weeks.

His apartment really is only five minutes away, even with Steve limping the whole way and Bucky remembering barely to keep his hands to himself. Bucky finds himself very aware of Steve’s proximity, of the heat of him even through the sodden chill of the rain, and clenches his hands into fists inside his coat.

The building is one of the few in the neighbourhood that has so far resisited the general gentrification, and the lobby is small and narrow and dank; but when Steve sees the elevator tucked in behind the stairwell he raises an eyebrow.

“Fancy,” he drawls. “You guys got a butler, too?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Bucky. “And a maid service — they leave out the used condoms for authenticity.”

In the cigarette and beer stink of the elevator, installed in the 70s and probably never maintained since then, judging by the way it shrieks and shudders its way to Bucky’s floor, Bucky catches something that might have been a smirk on Steve’s face, amused under the strip light. 

“This is me,” he says, fumbling his keys and hoping to God that he can blame it on the numbness of his fingers from the rain. Steve doesn’t say anything as they step inside, Bucky closing the door behind them and directing Steve to a metal chair in the kitchen, one of two sitting neatly under the round table against a wall.

“I’ll, uh,” he says, “get the first aid kit, hang on.”

It feels strange to have Steve in his apartment, to leave him alone in his kitchen with his dirty dishes from this morning sitting in the sink, his takeout cartons on the side. He wishes he had tidied up properly the night before, can feel his father’s disapproving stare on the back of his head as he pulls the plastic box out from the bathroom cabinet. _He doesn’t want to be here_ , he reminds himself. 

Steve doesn’t let him help. Bucky stands, leaning against the cabinets, and desperately tries not to watch as Steve applies salve to the grazes on his face, a band-aid to the cut above his eye that is dripping blood down his eyebrow and along his eye socket. His lip is split, and Bucky tries very hard not to think about touching the wound with the flat of his thumb, about pressing his lips to it and kissing it better, about how Steve might sound as he tilted his head and let Bucky kiss him properly, lick inside his mouth.

He turns away and says,

“You want coffee? Or a beer?”

Steve grunts; his fingers are questing along the line of his ribcage over his shirt, and he must have caught a bruise. Bucky’s fingers go white on the countertop, his eyes squeezing shut.

“Coffee,” says Steve, after a moment. “Thanks.”

So grateful for the distraction he feels, for one terrible moment, that he might cry, Bucky opens the coffee with shaking fingers, busies himself with the mundanity of filling the machine grounds and checking the water levels, and then with finding mugs to fill and whether he has sugar to offer.

“How’d you take it?”

“Just black is fine,” Steve says. Bucky pours, as slowly as feasibly possible, and forces himself to take deep, slow breaths through his nose. He turns around.

Steve accepts his coffee without a word; he’s looking around Bucky’s apartment, or what he can see of it from the kitchen, with a look of something like surprise on his face. Something like disbelief, maybe, in the slight upwards tilt of his eyebrows in the centre, making his eyes seem wider. They are so blue in his face.

“You just moved in?” he says. Bucky blinks, catching himself, and glances around; he sees his apartment as Steve must see it, for the first time, with the ancient furniture and neutral wall colours and complete absense of decoration. He’s pretty sure the only personal touches about the place are his photographs of Rebecca, and of his parents’ wedding, and his dad in his uniform.

“Uh,” he says, and scrubs the side of his thumb against his eyebrow. “Lived here five years, actually.”

Steve stares at him, one eyebrow darting up towards his hairline.

“I’m not one for interior design,” Bucky says.

“No shit,” says Steve. “What, you move around a lot as a kid? You got most of your shit still in boxes.” Which is embarrassingly true, boxes neatly labelled and neatly stacked against one wall.

“Army brat,” he says. “Never realised it rubbed off on me so much, I guess.”

“It looks like a motel,” says Steve, his voice amused and wry around the lip of his cup as he takes a long sip. “I reckon your couch is older than I am.”

Bucky laughs; he can’t quite believe he’s having this conversation. Nat knows him too well to comment on his living arrangements, and he doesn’t have anyone else over whose opinion actually matters to him. It feels a little surreal, and he presses his palm against the coffee mug to feel the heat of it sear against his skin. “Probably,” he agrees, “but most of the springs are still solid, so I reckon no one’s made a porn on it.”

“Pretty sure that’s what my neighbours do,” Steve says, looking at the couch and not at Bucky, his long fingers wrapped around his own cup. “No one’s stamina is that good.”

 _Depends on who you’re with_ , Bucky thinks, and then quashes the thought before he can get distracted again, and embarrass himself, and lose this fragile civility that coffee and idodine has brought between them. He sips at his coffee, and wishes for whiskey.

 

“Thanks for the coffee,” Steve says, as Bucky sees him to the door. “And, you know,” he waves at his face. “Though your first aid kit could use some of those nurses stockings.”

Bucky wonders if that’s something Steve likes, has a flash of himself rolling stockings up to his thighs, kneeling runs in them between Steve’s legs.

“Hey,” he says, because Steve is leaving and he needs to say something, needs to know that this twenty minutes of something almost like easy companionship isn’t the last time he’ll spend with Steve; he grabs Steve’s wrist and lets it go immediately when Steve turns around to look at him, afraid that contact will shatter whatever middle ground they’ve reached, “I really am sorry, you know? I just— even though I don’t know what I— I want to make it right,” he finishes, and it sounds lame even to his own ears. “If you’ll let me.”

Steve stares at him for a long time, face devoid of any emotion, and Bucky tries desperately not to fidget, or to notice that Steve is close enough to kiss. When Steve sticks his hand out, he almost jumps.

“Steve Rogers,” he says. Bucky blinks, thrown completely off-guard, and then takes it.

“James Barnes,” he says. “My friends call me Bucky.”

“Good to meet you, James,” Steve says, because they are not friends. “Thanks again.”

“No problem,” Bucky says. “I’ll see about those stockings.” 

Steve has already turned away, flipping up the collar of his coat in preparation for the rain outside, but Bucky hears him laugh as he heads towards the elevator. He closes the door, and stands there for a long moment, his hand still on the doorknob; he feels light-headed, almost dizzy, and the tightness that has twisted in his chest since Steve first confronted him on the rooftop eases, somewhat. 

 

Things are easier at the office, after that. Bucky still has to catch himself when he looks at Steve because he knows that he has to look, now, because not looking is tantamount to ignoring; but he has to make sure that he doesn’t _look_ , which is perhaps one of the hardest things that Bucky has ever had to do, limit himself to glances and nods when all he wants to do is stare at the way Steve’s neck falls away into the collar of his shirt and at the way the thin bones of his wrists move when he’s handing out the mail.

It’s lucky, then, that Bucky doesn’t actually see Steve all that much; although this doesn’t stop him from agonising in front of the thin mirror inside his closet door every morning over what he’s going to wear. The girls notice, because they are all evil and out to make his life a living hell — Jess says,

“hey, Barnes, looking sharp. You getting all dressed up for someone?”

Bucky feels a hot touch of embarrassment and something almost like shame in the pit of his chest, but he winks at Jess and blows her a kiss and says,

“only for you, babe,”

and she laughs and lets it go.

 

“Ask him out,” Nat says, one night when they’re out drinking after work, “for the love of God, please, _ask him out_.”

“He doesn’t even _like_ me,” Bucky says, and hears how petulant he sounds and hates himself for it.

“Your pining is _aging_ me,” says Nat. “You see this grey hair?”

“You don’t have any grey hairs,” says Bucky.

“You want me to pass him a note?” Nat says, ignoring him. “‘ _Do you like me? Tick yes or no?_ ’”

Bucky must be drunk, because he considers this for one single, fleeting moment and then feels his doom rushing down upon him in the form of the withering and appallingly sympathetic look that Nat gives him.

“ _Ask. Him. Out_ ,” she says. “Just, I don’t know, just don’t _tell_ him it’s a date.”

“You want me to stealth date him,” Bucky says, his voice flat, because even he is not drunk enough to think that is a good idea. Although Darcy apparently is, because she suddenly appears at his elbow and says,

“who’s stealth dating?” in a voice that is not appropriate for inside use.

“Bucky and Steve from Building Management,” says Nat, proving Bucky’s theory that she is genuinely evil and has been pretending to be his friend all these years purely for this moment.

“Aww!” says Darcy, beaming in inebriated delight, “that’s adorable! Steve’s so nice, you guys’d be so cute! You’d better be good to him,” she adds, drunken-stern, mood switching suddenly as she jabs him in the sternum with one finger, “Steve’s a good guy.”

“ _Ask him out,_ ” Bobbi singsongs in his ear, and Bucky really needs to get new friends.

 

“Um,” he says, next time he sees Steve. He can see Jess and Carol giving him the thumbs up from over Steve’s shoulder, and pretends his palms aren’t sweating. “You, uh, you want to get a drink after work?”

Steve gives him a long look. “What for?”

“Nothing,” says Bucky. “Alcohol. The sake of.”

“You know the company will pay for a tutor,” Steve says.

“I speak four languages.”

“Pity none of those are English,” Steve says. “Alright,” he adds, and Bucky feels his stomach swoop into his lungs. “Where’d you want to go?”

 

“Is this,” says Steve, sliding onto the bench opposite Bucky, “a cop bar?” It’s an old Irish bar about halfway between the vague address that Steve had given Bucky in the alley last week and Bucky’s apartment; it’d felt like good neutral ground, when he’d suggested it, but now he’s looking at Steve looking at him, and wondering if he’d made a mistake.

“Uh,” says Bucky.

“This is a cop bar,” Steve confirms. “This your first time in here, or something?”

Before Bucky can latch onto that as a plausible excuse for not knowing that a bar he frequently patronises has another, more official, clientele, the barman says,

“hey, Barnes. Usual?” 

and he’s faced with Steve’s smirk.

“Yeah,” says Bucky, rather too late to save himself, if the way that Steve’s smirk broadens is any indication, “I mean, I knew that.”

“Sure,” says Steve. “If you say so.”

 

They talk about work, mostly, because work is a safe subject; Steve is a mine of information and a gossip to rival Nat after the third beer, and Bucky fills him in on all the background relating to the current workplace dramas 

(he recognises the irony of the fact that _he_ is the current workplace drama on his floor, panic flicking through him every time Steve ventures towards a topic that might be one of the girls spilling the beans to him, but he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know because he’s sitting in the booth opposite Bucky and their knees are close enough to touch)

that unfold quietly behind internal envelopes and in line at the cafeteria. Steve tells him about previous jobs he’s had, and it seems like Steve has had every job under the sun, and Bucky feels slightly ashamed of his own meager history of leaving military school and falling into accounting in the face of his wealth of experience. He watches Steve draw nonsense patterns in the condesation pooling on the tabletop, and swallows hard.

“Hey,” he says, as he walks mostly steadily back from the bathroom, “you wanna go grab some food?”

“Okay,” says Steve, after thinking about it for a moment extended by alcohol, “yeah,” he says, levering himself to his feet and following Bucky out the door, “there’s this falafel cart down the street—”

“ _No_ ,” says Bucky, grabbing his forearm and tugging Steve off-balance in the opposite direction; he leaves his fingers wrapped loosely around Steve’s sleeve, afraid that he’ll wander off and Bucky will lose this, “no, there’s a hole in the wall Turkish kebab this way, come on, I swear, it’ll change your life,” and Steve looks at him and laughs, and says,

“alright, if you promise,”

and Bucky beams at him.

 

They sit on a wall just inside the circle of white fluroescents that the kebab shop throws out onto the street and plow through their food, steaming on the frigid air, heedless of the way it burns their fingers and drips oil and fat down their wrists; the light from the neon pawn shop behind Steve catches in his hair, and Bucky stares and stares at the way Steve’s face moves when he laughs.

“This is pretty good,” says Steve, and Bucky has to look away quickly when he licks sauce from the heel of his hand, pink tongue against pale skin, “not life-changing, exactly,” and he laughs when Bucky clutches at his chest, dramatically offended,

“you _wound_ me, sir,” he says, swaying to his feet and shouting, “Asif! Did you hear that? Never serve his man again,”

and the vendor flicks a piece of lettuce at him and says,

“you allow that man to order kofte for his first time from my restaurant; you don’t get to complain this much.”

“The man has a point,” says Steve, grinning around a mouthful of naan and lamb, “you really let the side down there.”

 

The kebab shop is not far from Bucky’s apartment, something that seems to amuse Steve no end;

“do you ever know how to cook?” 

“Hey,” says Bucky, and then, “no, not really,”

so Steve walks back with him to his building to hail a cab. The night is overcast but still bitterly cold, the wind whipping up coat sleeves and biting tiny fingers through Bucky’s scarf, but he’s warm to his bones with beer and greasy food and Steve’s company, solid at his side.

“We should do this again some time,” Steve says, as Bucky scratches his way around the lock trying to get his key inside.

“Really?” says Bucky, fumbling his keys onto the pavement, “I mean, yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Steve, grinning either at Bucky attempting to pick his eyes up without slipping on the step or at the smile threatening to split his face in half. “Maybe you’re not as much of an asshole as you come over as.”

“I make a bad first impression,” Bucky agrees, solemnly. “Nat gave me a black eye.”

“Then I guess there’s hope,” says Steve, stepping back from the step as Bucky finally manages to get the door open, and raising his arm for a cab.

“Where there’s life,” says Bucky, as Steve climbs inside.

 _Where there’s life?_ he thinks and might say aloud, as he fights with the door to his apartment and mostly falls inside, _what the fuck, Barnes_.

 

He wakes up the next morning feeling like something died in his mouth, and to a series of texts from Darcy that read mostly along the lines of 

_I HEARD YOU HAD YOUR FIRST STEALTH DATE HOW DID IT GO_

and interspersed with messages that were just emojis in an order he couldn’t possibly understand.

 _Who gave you this number_ , he texts back, before putting his phone on silent and rummaging through his cupboards for aspirin.

 

The ice is there now, waiting for him when he steps off the train and tries to avoid getting jostled on it too much by the crowd of commuters leaving the city; the air stinks of it, crisp and painful against his nostrils and the back of his throat as he breathes (and he wonders how Steve’s asthma is doing, whether he has problems leaving the house on days like this when even Bucky can feel it crystalising in his lungs, wonders whether he has someone else to take care of him when he picks a fight with the New York winter and loses), the taste of loam, rotting and sweet, lingering at the back of his mouth.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, pulling the chair up next to Rebecca’s bed with a scrape that makes him wince, “how Regus?”

“I hate daytime tv,” she says, grimacing at him; she looks tired, the harsh hospital lighting catching in the hollows around her eyes and mouth, intensifying the wan hue of her skin. “You gotta get me out of here, Buck.”

“No can do,” he says, voice easy and bright as she grumbles and shifts on the bed, “doctor’s orders.”

“Please,” she scoffs, “you’ve been terrified of nurses ever since Sister Catherine caught you lifting meatballs from the cafeteria,” which, to be fair, is true, but in his defense, Sister Catherine had been six foot two of sheer muscle mass with the booming voice to match, enough to scare any six year old witless caught with their hand in the cookie jar, or ladle in the stew pot, bearing down on him like an avenging angel with a meter rule for a flaming sword.

“Either way,” he says, “I’m not breaking you out.”

“You look happier,” she says, after a long moment. “I take it the unfucking is going well?”

 _You look awful_ , Bucky thinks but doesn’t say because she should’ve been discharged by now but the doctors keep talking about irregularities with her blood work, and he can’t, he can’t. Instead, he says,

“yeah,” 

and can’t stop the smile catching at the corners of his mouth, just as Rebecca can’t not notice it and grin wickedly; Bucky’s going to be hearing about this one for years, he can tell, and oh, God, please let him be hearing about this for years. “Yeah, I think we— we might almost be friends, now.”

“A novel approach for you, big brother,” Rebecca says, and Bucky doesn’t catch her hand with her phone until he hears the click of the shutter and knows it’s too late, the stupid infatuated look on his face is preserved for all eternity in eight megabits on the cloud. “I have to say I approve.”

 

Steve picks the venue for their next casual drinks with a guy from work meet up,

“unless you wanna embarrass yourself with your knowledge of the neighbourhood you’ve been living in for _five years_ again,”

which Bucky doesn’t, not really, except that he’s caught between the memories of Steve’s laughter crinkling at his eyes and mouth and the almost teenaged desire to impress Steve, somehow, even though that boat has long since sailed; he agrees to the address that Steve suggests because he’s never heard of it, and he can tell that Steve can tell from the quirk of his lips, and he’s not staring, he’s _not_.

He spends about an hour in front of his wardrobe, debating what to wear because Steve had stuff he needed to do after work, so could they make it eight instead of six? and of course Bucky had agreed; only now he’s regretting it immensely, sitting on his bed with his head in his hands and wondering whether he should masturbate to take the edge off, or if that would only just make everything worse.

Nat, because she’s an angel who loves watching Bucky twist himself up in knots and will definitely lord this over him at a later date, gives him a precise outfit to wear after he snapchats her a picture of his utterly miserable face in a video response where she is clearly in a supermarket and Bucky can see the scandalised mother of two in the background hurrying her children away.

 _how do you know what’s in my closet?_ he texts back, yanking out the clothes suggested off their hangers and throwing them on, conscious of the time and hoping that he’s not going to be late.

 _see you every day, don't i_ , she says, and he sends her a picture of his unimpressed (but embarrassingly harassed) face flipping her off as he slams out of his apartment, jacket hanging off one shoulder.

 

The place that Steve suggested is one of those old pubs that the hipsters got their hands on and is now filled with long bench tables and oversized light fixtures hanging low from the ceiling.

“Really?” says Bucky, spotting Steve on the far side of the room and sliding in across from him, “you like this place?”

Steve looks around wistfully; “I used to come here before they changed it,” he says, “I guess old habits and shit. They make a killer stout, though—”

“You drink _stout_?”

“Hey,” says Steve, gesturing to himself, “have you seen me? I’m practically anaemic; it’s medicinal.”

“Uh huh,” says Bucky, grinning, “as you say, doc.”

 

The stout is rich and dark in his mouth, filling his stomach and making him forget that he hasn’t eaten, and somewhere between his third and fifth pint they find themselves on the topic of Bucky’s childhood.

“That how you learned so many languages?” Steve asks, swirling the last inch of stout in his glass and tipping it down in one mouthful, the long line of his throat exposed as he swallows.

“Yeah,” says Bucky, “you know, you end up in a new country and the teachers don’t speak English for all that it’s an international school; you gotta learn, and you gotta learn quick.” He swills the dregs of his pint around the bottom of his glass. “Most of it is swearing, though,” he admits; “I’m not all that comfortable putting it on my CV.”

“Bet it was useful for your college application, though,” Steve says, propping one elbow of the table and resting his chin in the palm of his hand, glancing around at the rest of the bar; it’s filled up a lot since they came in, and they’re having to lean across the table to hear one another.

Bucky shakes his head, burps quietly in his throat, and says,

“nah, I never went to college. Nat got me a job in Proc after I dropped out of Basic,”

and Steve stares at him. 

“Why’d you drop out?” he says. Bucky rolls his shoulder back in something that’s half a sigh and half a shrug, breathing out heavily towards the ceiling.

“Old man died,” he says, patting his coat down for his cigarettes; “realised I didn’t have to prove myself to him any more, and the military wasn’t gonna pay for Becks’ college, so.”

He finds the packet, fishes it out and says,

“I’m gonna head outside a minute, you wanna,”

and a girl shrieks with laughter behind Steve, loud and piercing and Steve flinches, grabs at his ear and turns his amplifier down, giving Bucky a look and says,

“yeah, I’ll come out. It’s getting a little crowded in here anyway.”

 

“i got leftover Chinese in my fridge,” says Bucky, careful to blow the smoke down wind away from Steve, “unless you want to go somewhere else.”

Steve checks his watch, shoulders hunched forwards against the snow and chin tucked into the scarf wound thick and tight around his neck.

“Sure,” he says, “it’ll be last call in a minute anyway.”

“I got beer, too,” Bucky says.

“I already said yes,” says Steve, “what you trying to do, get me drunk?” He’s swaying a little as he walks, the two of them weaving they’re way towards Bucky’s building down the slush covered pavements.

“Think the hipsters already got that covered,” says Bucky, grinning; “hey, hey do you ever wonder how they don’t get hair in the beer?”

“I know, right,” says Steve, “there’s just so much of it; they should have to wear those full face nets that fishmongers wear, or something.”

“Health and safety,” Bucky agrees, “we should call the — those people that do that.”

Steve is laughing at him, and stars are out, and the streetlights reflect very bright in Steve’s eyes when Bucky looks at him.

 

He doesn’t exactly remember Steve leaving last night, but he isn’t there when Bucky trips out of his room the next morning, clutching at his face, so he must have done. It takes Bucky until he’s halfway through his second cup of coffee, sitting on the cool kitchen floor to hide from the sunlight that is ignoring his headache and stabbing him in the retinas, over and over, before he realises that the dark square sitting on the floor against his couch isn’t his wallet.

Standing is too much effot; he crawls over to the couch, avoiding his narrow windows full of winter sunshine, and flops down onto his stomach to open the wallet and see Steve’s face in terrible DMV photography staring back at him.

“Shit,” he moans, because lying on his stomach had been a bad idea, and also because he doesn’t have Steve’s number and can’t text him to say he left his wallet at Bucky’s, and he doesn’t want Steve to have to go through the hassle of calling up his bank and cancelling his credit cards and then standing in line at the DMV to get a replacement license.

“I’m fucked,” he says, lying flat on his back in the living room, staring at the ceiling because he’s pretty sure that he has just decided to go across town to give back Steve’s wallet so that Steve won’t be inconvienced, despite the fact that Bucky feels like all his internal organs are trying to climb their way out through his skull. 

 

He gets a cab to Steve’s apartment, because he finally has the address from Steve’s license and because he cannot face the subway; he’s already got a baseball cap dragged down low over his face and he hasn’t shaved, and the only reason he isn’t wearing sunglasses is because it’s late November and he’ll never get a cab if he looks like a wino. He’s still wearing the clothes from last night, as if that wasn’t bad enough.

 

Steve’s building doesn’t have an elevator, which he forgot about until he snuck in behind someone else leaving the building and saw the staircase in the lobby; and Bucky genuinely feels like he might actually die, honest and for true, by the time he gets to Steve’s floor.

A guy wearing a USAF tshirt opens the door when Bucky knocks, attractive and athletic and looking about as healthy as Bucky is feeling far from, right now.

“I, uh,” he says. “Does Steve live here?”

“Uh huh,” says the guy, leaning against the wall and blocking the space between it and the door with his body, “who’s asking?”

“I— I’m James Barnes, from the office? Steve left his wallet at mine, last night,”

and he _hears_ how it sounds, the moment it leaves his mouth, and he sees this guy hear it and how his whole face changes in amusement, dark eyes dancing at him.

“That right,” he says, and then leans backwards to bellow into the apartment, making Bucky flinch at the volume, “Steve! Someone at the door!”

and Steve comes stumbling into view, looking as bad as Bucky feels (and probably looks, although Bucky is wearing yesterday’s clothes and a wool coat and Steve is wearing sweat pants worn soft and thin with use, and a hoodie with the ghost of a logo where the stitching used to be, and Bucky feels his throat go very dry, and he almost can’t breathe).

“You,” he says, fumbling the wallet out of his pocket and thrusting it out towards Steve, “you left this.”

Steve stares at it. “You brought it all the way over?” he says.

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t have your number.”

Steve squints at him, disbelieving, and then blinks. “Thanks, Buck,” he says.

When the door closes, Bucky hears a long, low whistle, and the other guy’s voice:

“ _damn_ , Rogers,”

and Steve say,

“fuck off, Sam, it was friends drinking,”

and he doesn’t even notice the horror of the sixth floor in a walkup on his way back out onto the street, the pain of his hangover lost behind the great bubble of something akin to happiness that has appeared in his chest and threatens to carry him off all the way back to his apartment.

 

He stands in the shower later in the day, letting the water sluice the remnants of the hangover from him, still smiling, when he suddenly remembers Steve’s voice saying _Buck_ in that morning-rough gravel and feels his stomach clench, and he gasps against the water of the shower as he imagines what if, what if Sam hadn’t been there and Steve had pulled him inside the apartment and let Bucky put his hands on him, sliding rough palms over his stomach and ribcage and kiss him, low and tender, like lovers do.

“Fuck,” he says, hand on his cock, “fuck, Steve,” lost in the fantasy of Steve biting at his mouth and pressing down on his shoulders, pushing Bucky to his kness; and Bucky would go, willingly, he had seen the thick outline of Steve’s cock through the sweatpants and oh, God, he probably hadn’t been wearing anything beneath them — Bucky could almost feel the weight of him in his mouth and he swallows, convulsively, over and over as he gasps and comes against the tiles.

He stands under the water until it starts to run cold, hands shaking over his face; and wants and _wants_ so badly he can barely breathe.


End file.
